Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday August 22, 2006 @01:10PM
from the master-chief-reporting-in dept.

1up reports on comments from Bungie, who has come out to say that their next title Halo 3 will 'feel' like the first Halo: Combat Evolved. From the article: "'I have been playing through Campaign mode purely for kicks. Exploring, in fact,' [Frank O'Connor] says. 'There's lots of the feel of the original Halo, where you'll find yourself in a huge (dangerous) and intrinsically fascinating environment and just want to go tool around and check things out.' At the same time, O'Connor is quick to dismiss that Bungie's developing a sandbox, Grand Theft Auto-inspired shooter."

All I want to know is, did they make the pistol suck less than it does in Halo 2? Because that was a bit disappointing.

Couldn't agree with you more; that and the damn sword really made Halo 2 multiplayer suck ass. Halo 1 multiplayer is a much more enjoyable experience. I stopped playing Halo 2 when I got lost for the 141241st time; the only challenging part was finding out where to go.

Vehicles that can be more fun than moving on foot. No othen FPS (GTA doesn't count) did vehicles as well. The Ghost is just fun. Yet it's still balanced enough that a person on foot can reasonably expect to beat a person in a vehicle, without making vehicles feel gimped.

Insane amount of polish for its time. From what I remember, we were just inching along on Half-Life improvements, and PC gamers were scoffing at console gamers, even as they mostly played Counter-Strike. Then there was Halo. Counter-Strike... then Halo. It would have been a shocking leap forward in graphics, gameplay, and AI, even if it was a PC game -- and it was a console game.

The game made the console. You could argue that Zelda made the Gamecube, but most people who had an N64 bought a PS2 instead, so that was a failure. The PS2 simply had more games, but I'd imagine almost no one bought a PS2 because of any one game -- or if they did, I know there aren't a significant number of people who bought a PS2 for the same game. People bought the Xbox because of Halo, and developers made other games for the Xbox because it was popular -- because of Halo.

Amazing soundtrack. Other games have had good soundtracks, but the Halo and Halo 2 soundtracks are worth buying even if you don't like the game. Very rarely does the soundtrack alone sound like a symphony. Very rarely does a game soundtrack evoke emotions other than headbanging adrenaline.

Compelling, epic story. Especially Halo 2. Naysayers will break down the story to the point where it sounds stupid, but you can do that with anything. As an aspiring author, I've discovered that it's all about the execution, even in a book. It's an epic story, with characters you actually care about.

Master Chief. It's all about characters, and this one in particular is just a fun character to play. It means the game can be as realistic as possible, but there's good reason that when you win, your character has done such impossible things -- he really is unique, he really would be able to do that. Compare that to, say, Quake 4, which is the closest anything else comes -- your character has a reputation, but it's not really explained why he's so unique. And in creating this character and the game around him, they've done what every Superman game and every Hulk game has failed utterly at -- creating a character that really is too much of a badass, too powerful, and creating a realistic challenge to match. This is how you can have an epic first-person game, where you play as only one character -- make the character that good.

They did it again. People debate about whether Halo 2 is better or worse than the original Halo. But the fact is, they can actually have that debate. With most sequels, you can't -- either the original was so bad no one cares (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time faced no competition from its predecessors), or the new version sucks so blatantly compared to the original (Doom 3), or not enough has really changed for anyone to care (your point about Madden). The fact is, Halo 2 did significantly change compared to Halo -- and I'm not talking about carjacking, swording, or dual-wielding. Subtle tweaks all around -- the pistol is no longer the hand of God, needlers finally have a purpose, Flood heads actually hurt. Halo 2 was every bit as good as Halo, but it was different enough, in gameplay and storyline, that anyone who played Halo will want to play Halo 2.

All of the above. Think of it this way -- I don't like Linux because it's unique. I like it because it has everything that every other OS has, and more. If I wanted something truly unique and innovative, I'd be using Plan 9, HURD, or Minix. Halo doesn't improve much on the first-person shooter, i

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time faced no competition from its predecessors

The fuck are you talking about? Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame were at least as good as SoT--I'd argue dramatically better. Maybe instead of "predecessors" you mean "single, immediate predecessor"?